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Sharing is good: Town must partner on expenses

AMBROSE CLANCY PHOTO The Town Board at its work session Tuesday. From left, Councilman Paul Shepherd, Supervisor Jim Dougherty, Councilman Peter Reich and Councilman Ed Brown. Not shown in photograph, Councilwoman Chris Lewis.
AMBROSE CLANCY PHOTO The Town Board at its work session Tuesday. From left, Councilman Paul Shepherd, Supervisor Jim Dougherty, Councilman Peter Reich, Councilman Ed Brown and Town Clerk Dorothy Ogar . Not shown in photograph, Councilwoman Chris Lewis.

On the Town Board’s work session agenda were details of the state-imposed tax cap on municipalities, streamlining the town code when it comes to moorings and government efforts to reduce tick-borne illnesses.

Along with a 2 percent cap on tax raises by municipalities imposed by the state, towns, villages and school districts must complete a “statement of intentions” to share services with neighboring municipalities and districts to reduce taxes.

The target is so save at least $70,000 annually.

Town Attorney Laury Dowd said shared services wouldn’t be required until next year, but inter-municipal agreements “don’t happen overnight” so the board should be discussing possibilities of how to partner with neighboring towns to save money. She noted that Shelter Island will have a more difficult task to share services since it’s an island. Possibilities included, she added, sharing expenses on consultants and getting a group rate on insurance.

Councilwoman Chris Lewis said she and Ms. Dowd were meeting with School Superintendent Leonard Skuggevik this week to brainstorm about town and school collaboration on certain services.

Supervisor Jim Dougherty called for ideas from his colleagues.

Mr. Dougherty reported on a meeting he attended in Riverhead last week of the Suffolk County Tick Advisory Committee. He disparaged certain scientists on the panel —“Some fancy guys from Stony Brook” — who aren’t interested in acting on the public health crisis of tick-borne diseases, he said. “Rather than getting from A to B, they’d rather stay at A and talk about it for a year or two,” the supervisor said.

He noted that Springs and Montauk will be consulting with town officials on 4-poster programs for their villages.
Councilman Peter Reich proposed a plan to streamline the process of obtaining mooring rights. Presently, Mr. Reich said, there are 89 “stake, mooring and pulley” systems, but only 52 are on a grid that is used to easily locate them.

“It might make sense to grid all of them” that are on town property, Mr. Reich said. There are also problems of identification and his idea is to “upgrade the code to address these ambiguities.”

This would help residents seeking applications from going through a lengthy application process, saving them and the town money, Mr. Reich said, and his colleagues agreed.

Mr. Dougherty reported that the $350,000 promised to Shelter Island by state representatives, as reported, would be used to put a new roof on the Medical Center and pave the Town Hall and Police Department parking lots.

The supervisor, at the request of Councilman Ed Brown last week, said that Town Clerk Dorothy Ogar reported the town took in $603,900 from January to June of this year, a 20 percent spike over the same period last year.